


I Thought the Birds Would Sing

by Mireille



Category: Avengers Assemble (Cartoon)
Genre: F/M, M/M, Polyamory
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-25
Updated: 2019-07-25
Packaged: 2020-07-22 19:08:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,364
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19974889
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mireille/pseuds/Mireille
Summary: He's notdatingScott. Even if Natasha approves of it. That'd be ridiculous, and Clint's not--Okay, maybe he's dating Scott alittle bit.(Or, to put it another way: aww, crush,no.)





	I Thought the Birds Would Sing

****

"You, of all people, ought to know that we weren't on a date," Clint protested, waving his phone with the offending text ( _So does Lang put out on the first date?_ ) at Natasha as soon as he was through the door of her room. She refused to come to his, citing his general lack of interest in ever cleaning the place up.

When they'd first moved into the tower, he'd tried arguing that she was stealthier than he was, so her coming to his room would reduce the chances that anybody would notice that they were a couple. 

It hadn't been long, though, before they'd decided that since the Avengers didn't share SHIELD's rules about fraternization, it didn't matter whether or not anyone did notice. It had only been a little longer before they'd both realized that nobody was ever going to notice anyway. Either the nuances of romantic relationships went right past them (Hulk, usually Thor), they just didn't have much interest in minding other people's business (Sam, Thor the rest of the time), or they were too busy being very confused about their own lives (Steve and Tony, obviously). 

And while not having to sneak around made a welcome change, it did mean that Clint had lost his best argument. 

Natasha arched an eyebrow and went back to cleaning one of her knives. "You weren't? You flirted with him all afternoon, went all the way to Staten Island to take him to your favorite pizza place. How is that not a date?"

When she put it that way, Clint had to admit that on the surface, it could sound kind of like a date. "Could you maybe put the knife away while you accuse me of cheating on you?"

She shrugged, but laid the knife down on her table. "I'm not accusing you of anything. Also, if I felt at all threatened by Scott, you'd know it." 

True. Probably painfully. 

"There's nothing about Scott that could threaten you, though," Clint insisted. "Scott isn't a threat to us in any way. I mean, I'm glad he and I straightened everything out between us. I'm even glad he's on the team now. But that wasn't a date, and I didn't flirt with Scott." 

There was only one chair in Natasha's room, and she was using it, so instead he flopped down on the bed and stared at the ceiling. "I can be sure of that," he went on, "because I have exactly zero romantic interest in Scott Lang." 

He didn't have to be looking at Natasha to be able to feel the particular expression she was directing his way. Dammit, that look was for interrogating bad guys or trying to instill some tiny sense of shame into Tony. As Natasha's boyfriend, Clint was almost definitely sure that he was supposed to be exempt from getting the scary look. 

"Aw, come on," he said, after thirty full seconds of the scary look. "Stop that."

"No problem," she said. "As soon as you stop lying to me."

"I'm not lying!"

The eyebrow crept closer to Natasha's hairline. 

"Much," Clint mumbled, feeling like a kindergartner who was about to be told he had to sit next to the teacher during recess. 

"That's better," she said. "Why are you making a big deal out of this? You know it's okay with me."

"No?" 

How was it okay? He'd just sort-of confessed to Natasha that sure, there might have been some interest back in the day. Interest that might have had something to do with just how angry he'd been when he'd thought Scott had stabbed him in the back. 

Now that he knew he'd been wrong about Scott, and he and Scott really were on the same side--the right side--he also knew that interest hadn't entirely gone away. 

But he and Natasha had been together for years now, and he still woke up every damn day feeling amazed and lucky (and occasionally slightly terrified) because of it, so any _interest_ he had in anyone else didn't matter, and acting on that interest would definitely not be okay. 

"Oh," he said after a moment when Natasha just sat, waiting for Clint to figure things out. "You mean it's okay because you trust me completely."

That got him another look. "Do I go around trusting _anyone_ completely?"

Okay, no. Definitely not. He wasn't even sure she trusted herself completely. She trusted him as much as she trusted anybody, and the rest of the team almost as much, but "completely" wasn't the right word.

"Can you pretend I'm dumb and explain it to me slowly, then?" 

She looked like she was about to laugh at him, but at least she didn't. Not quite. 

"It's okay because I'd be fine if you and Scott _had_ been out on a date. If you're attracted to him, maybe you should see what happens." She turned her chair so that she could reach over and put her hand on his knee. "Whatever happens between you and him, it won't change anything between you and me, unless you want it to. As far as I'm concerned, it'll just be nice to have someone I can send you off to pester when you get annoying." 

"That's not fair," he said. "I'm not that annoying." 

"Says you."

"Anyway, who says he's interested, even if I was?" He didn't remember Scott doing much flirting back. Though maybe that had something to do with knowing the circus would be moving on soon, leaving Scott behind? And then later to knowing he was going to steal their money so that he could return it to its rightful owners? 

Clint hated trying to think seriously about stuff like that. He'd rather leave empty jars of peanut butter for Hulk to find, and that was something he only did if there was at least a ninety percent chance Thor would get blamed for it. 

He and Natasha had just... happened. What they had was great, and it wasn't that he thought relationships shouldn't take any effort, but he hadn't had to think about it in advance. 

Natasha probably had, because Natasha didn't brush her teeth without planning it out in advance, but for Clint, they'd just been working side by side--with maybe a little more sexual tension than Clint had with most people he worked with--and then, one day, after a mission that had nearly gone badly wrong, Natasha had kissed him. 

But now he was supposed to think about whether or not there was anything between him and Scott. To Clint, that was basically the same thing as saying there wasn't. If there had been, he wouldn't have to think about it. He'd just know.

"There's only one way for you to know for sure," Natasha said cheerfully, setting aside the knife and picking up one of the probes from her set of lockpicks. "I'll bet you twenty bucks that he's into you." She rubbed the probe with a cloth, studied it, and wiped it down again.

Ugh, why did she have to know him so well? A larger bet, he'd have turned down because he wasn't that much of a gambler. A smaller one, he'd have rejected because she clearly wouldn't have been serious. But twenty bucks was just enough to make things interesting. 

If they had a bet riding on it, he'd have to genuinely flirt with Scott. He wouldn't be able to just say that he knew Scott wasn't interested, or make a pathetic attempt that was doomed to fail. 

Natasha knew all of that, of course. She was trapping him into taking this potential thing with Scott seriously. 

For some value of "trapping" that meant that the only thing keeping him from saying "no" was his own desire to be proven right. 

"It sucks that I'm going to take your money."

"If you win, I'm good for it. When _I_ win, I'm also willing to accept you taking my next turn at team laundry, if you don't want to pay cash." 

"There's no way I'd do that for less than five hundred." Hulk's laundry was disgusting. Thor's was only slightly better--fewer food stains, but still smelling like the bottom of a gym bag that had been forgotten in a hot car for a few months. "Also, there's no way you're winning this one."

Natasha actually got up and patted him on the head. "You know what I love about you, Clint?"

"My boyish good looks, unfailing charm, and unparalleled sexual prowess?" 

"The way you never, ever learn."

****

Natasha was completely wrong about him. He definitely learned from his mistakes.

For the past couple of days, Clint had been mentally running though all the times back in the old days that he'd tried to flirt with Scott and been totally ignored, just so that he had a better idea of what approach to take. 

Unfortunately, it looked like the only approach that might work was, "be somebody else," because it wasn't like Clint had had an entirely different personality back then. A lot looser sense of ethics, but still, under that, Trickshot had been plain old ordinary Clint Barton. 

Plain old ordinary Clint Barton had been told on more than one occasion--usually by Natasha--that he was kind of a dork. Scott was more than "kind of" a dork. Maybe he could work with that? 

It was better than nothing, anyway. 

He couldn't exactly go and pester Scott in his lab, even though that was, at least in Avengers Tower, the time-honored technique for expressing interest in one of the tech guys. (Okay, so only one person ever did that, but he did it a lot, so it was time-honored. Not necessarily effective, but time-honored.) 

But even though there was a room designated as "Scott's lab," Scott's actual lab was the shoebox-sized container in the middle of the floor. While he could make the lab bigger, he preferred shrinking himself down to work in it, probably because it kept Tony from looking over his shoulder and making "helpful" suggestions while he worked. 

Clint couldn't shrink himself down to ant size to join him, though, so he had to just look down at the shoebox-lab and wave. 

To his surprise, that actually worked: ant-sized Scott came out of the lab, moved to a safe distance from both the lab and Clint, and then returned to his normal size. "What's up?"

"Just saying hi." 

"...Oookay," Scott said. "No crisis? I didn't miss a call to assemble? Not sure how well my ID card works when it's shrunk. It should be fine, but you never know until you test things out. Or is there food?" he added hopefully. "Tony said something about maybe ordering dinner." He took off his helmet; the light made his hair shine like the copper of a new penny. 

Which. Well. Clint had a type, and it could basically be summed up as, "smart-ass redheads," so of course he was going to appreciate that. 

"Nope, nothing going on." He shrugged sheepishly. He really should have thought this through before coming in here. 

"You can just text me if you want to say hi," Scott said. "I put my number in your phone the other night while you were arguing with Widow about whether or not she was cheating at cards."

"She definitely was."

"It was a game of Uno, Clint, I think you could let it slide." 

"That's because you're new," Clint said. "Stick around a while, you'll find out there's no way that's ever going to happen."

"I should have known. Anyway, I should probably get back to--" He waved toward his lab. "I mean, if that's all you wanted." 

Crap. Then inspiration struck. Scott had mentioned food... "Sure, if you want. You hungry, though? I was about to go out for a bite, and I wouldn't mind some company." 

Scott hesitated, so maybe that hadn't been as brilliant an idea as Clint had thought it was. But then he said, "You know, I could eat. Let me just change out of this." He waved his hand to indicate the suit that he wore when working with Pym particles. 

"Oh, you definitely need to take that suit off," Clint said, and then tried not to wince at how that sounded. Jeez, Barton, that was smooth. "I'm not going to be seen in public with you dressed like that," he clarified. 

Clint was in civvies today himself, not that it was that radical a departure from his Hawkeye gear: jeans; a purple T-shirt--sleeveless, of course, because the world (and maybe Scott) deserved to feast its eyes on the glory of his biceps; sneakers instead of boots. A hoodie, because it was cold enough out there that all the "feasting on the glory" would have to take place inside where it was warm. And, of course, his trademark glasses, because he didn't get recognized often enough for it to be annoying. 

So yes, he acknowledged that he was basically wearing a street-clothes version of his Hawkeye outfit, but that was a far cry from Scott's suit. If he wanted to wear a T-shirt with a giant ant on it, he could knock himself out, but a line had to be drawn. 

"Meet you downstairs in twenty?" Scott didn't wait for him to answer, just headed out the door, presumably to his room. 

_Going for burgers with Lang,_ Clint texted Natasha. 

_Ooh, a second date,_ she sent back, along with the kiss emoji. 

He'd have thought that having his girlfriend encouraging him to make out with someone else would be less annoying than this. 

He'd clearly have been very, very wrong.

****

"Admit it," Clint said as he swiped a perfectly golden fry through a puddle of ketchup. "This is the best burger you've ever eaten."

"Top five," Scott said. He took another bite of his burger. "Maybe top three," he conceded, mouth still full.

"You're just being stubborn." Clint would be the first to admit that while the rest of the diner's offerings were perfectly edible, none of them reached anything better than "yeah, it's fine," and their hash browns were always slightly grayish for some reason. The burgers and fries, on the other hand, were inexplicably perfect. 

"The fries aren't fresh-cut," Scott argued. "They're good, but someone just dumped a bag of frozen crinkle-cut fries into a deep fryer. Not the best. Top three, though, I'll give you."

"If you agree that this is the best burger and fries you've ever had, I'll stop talking about it."

Scott grinned. "Okay, that's a compelling argument. Totally the best ever, Barton."

"That's better." He'd been dating Natasha long enough to know how to take any victory, no matter how small and artificial, where he found it. 

"Now, back to that arrow design," Scott said in between sips of his Coke. He'd suggested that Clint make a specialized arrow to use the next time they needed to shoot Ant-Man toward a target, the way they'd done with Red Skull. "There aren't many places without ants I can use for transportation, but just in case we find ourselves in that situation again, I'd like a better option than, 'hang on tight, buddy.'"

"Some people are so picky," Clint said, but he got out a pen and started sketching out some preliminary designs on a napkin. 

Over the next forty-five minutes, they came up with a design that Clint thought he could get a working prototype from; ordered a basket of slightly disappointing onion rings because their waitress was giving them dirty looks for camping out at the table; and did not flirt, even once. 

Twice, Clint sent texts to Natasha, just to keep her informed of the lack of progress.

The first, while Scott was in the men's room: _Definitely not interested. Me, anyway. Don't know about him._

And later, when Scott was studying the fourth napkin full of arrow sketches: _Having a good time, but it's not a date._

It definitely wasn't a date, and while Clint still thought Scott was a good-looking guy, he wasn't attracted to him. It was more of an aesthetic appreciation. If he'd genuinely been into Scott, there'd have been a... zing. A thrill. The old cliché of fireworks going off. The kind of sparks that had flown around him and Natasha. 

There'd never been that kind of zing between him and Scott. He'd flirted with Scott back when they were both with the Circus of Crime because Scott had been interesting to talk to, and because flirting was fun, and because a lot of Clint's fellow criminals had been terrible company. 

That hadn't gone anywhere, and this wasn't going to either. But it was a nice lunch with a new teammate about whom Clint had been kind of--okay, massively--wrong, so it wasn't wasted time. 

And it was going to get him twenty bucks from Natasha, which was even better. 

Not that Clint was going to mention that part to Scott, of course. He wasn't stupid.

To his surprise, on their walk back to the tower, Scott was the one to bring up Natasha. "So, the Black Widow." 

"Yeah? What about her?"

Scott shoved his hands in his pockets, keeping his head down against the wind. Clint felt incredibly smug about having thought to wear a jacket. "Are you two a thing?"

At Scott's question, he laughed. "Would you believe you're the first person to ask me that?"

"Yeah, I guess it is kind of a dumb question. I mean, she's way out of your league," Scott said, and then squawked when Clint punched him in the arm. 

"That she is," he admitted, "but I was more impressed by your powers of observation. I mean, Cap saw me coming out of Natasha's room at five in the morning once, and all he said was, 'I never pegged you for an early riser.'" 

The noise Scott made at that was one of the most ridiculous things Clint had ever heard in his life: a combination of a giggle, a snort, and a high-pitched sound that Clint could only describe as "wheek!" "Did you tell him you'd never pegged Captain America for an idiot?"

"Aw, he's not that bad," Clint said. "He's a tactical genius, and as much as I make fun of his speeches, he's one hell of an inspiring leader. He even understands a lot more of the scientific side of things than he usually lets on. But one of the secrets the Avengers ID card lets you in on is that Steve Rogers can also be seriously dumb about some things. Especially about other people's personal lives."

He didn't explain his theory that Cap was too preoccupied with being clueless about his own personal life to notice anyone else's. Scott would probably discover that for himself before too much longer. 

"So that's a 'yes' for you and Natasha, though?"

"Yeah." Wow. Was Scott interested in _Nat_? That was going to be so much better than just plain being right that Scott wasn't interested in him. He was going to get to gloat over this for months, maybe even years, to come. 

The wind picked up a little more; Scott's shoulders hunched up enough that they were almost shielding his ears, and Clint pulled up the hood of his jacket before he said anything else. 

"We're not exclusive, or anything," he said, just like that hadn't been news to him very recently. 

It shouldn't have been, he knew, considering some of the things they'd had to do for SHIELD. (One benefit of being on Tony's team instead of working for Nick Fury: no honeypot missions.) But missions weren't the same as their real lives, and anyway, they'd never actually discussed it before. He was better about communicating than Natasha was, but both of them probably kept too many things on a need-to-know basis. 

Scott didn't respond to that, so Clint clarified. "So, you know, if you're interested, you should feel free to talk to her about it." Natasha was going to kill him for this, but it was going to be so very worth it. 

Scott gave him a weird look. Maybe it was a little strange to be encouraging one of your co-workers to ask your girlfriend out, but everything in their lives was a little strange anyway. 

His good deed for the day completed, Clint let the subject drop, and after a block or two, Scott stopped looking at him like he'd grown an extra head. By the time they reached the tower, they'd lapsed back into the easy camaraderie they'd fallen into at the diner. 

That was unexpectedly nice. Clint got along with the rest of the team just fine, and he considered them all his friends. He'd take a bullet (or a laser blast, or any other terrible fate) for any of them, Hulk included. Really, they were more than just his friends; they were his family. 

But they weren't his _buddies._ He didn't generally hang out with them outside the common areas of the tower (Natasha excepted) unless it was some kind of a team thing. He'd never taken them (again, Nat excepted) to his favorite pizza place, or to that particular diner. 

That was fine. He had Natasha, and they all spent a lot of time in the tower anyway. There were a lot of team get-togethers, too, because Tony liked throwing parties. Clint wasn't lonely. 

But it'd still be nice to have someone around who shared a lot of his sense of humor, and maybe some of his background. Tony had always been filthy rich. Steve was from the forties. Hulk was... Hulk. Sam was a kid, Thor was an alien, Natasha had been raised as a Russian super-spy. 

But Scott was just a guy, and maybe that was what Clint's life needed. A friend who was just a normal person that maybe Clint could hang out with sometimes. 

That'd probably be convenient if there turned out to be something between Natasha and Scott, too.

There probably wouldn't be, but who could tell? He and Scott were enough alike, now that Clint thought about it, that Nat just might find him appealing. 

"So," Scott said, as the elevator started to take them up to the residential floors. "You've shown me what you claim are the best pizza and burgers in New York."

"The best burgers in the country," Clint corrected him. 

"Fine, if you say so. Got any more tips?"

"Do you like Indian food?" Clint responded without thinking. Jeez, was he just going to take Scott to all his favorite places? 

"It's okay."

"It's okay," Clint mimicked. "If you think it's just okay, you need Mumbai Spice in your life, ASAP. It's kind of a hole in the wall, but the food is great." 

"Is that how you're going to describe every place you take me?"

"Probably. All the best food is in little places the foodies and critics overlook because they're not fancy enough. So. Dinner tomorrow?"

"Not tomorrow. Thursday would work."

"Thursday it is."

So yes, apparently he _was_ going to take Scott to all his favorite restaurants. It made sense. Scott was fairly new to the city and kind of a doofus. Somebody had to take him under their wing, and who else was going to do it?

Unfortunately, this meant Natasha was going to keep insisting that he hadn't won their bet yet. Still, she'd admit defeat eventually, and it wasn't like he was desperate for twenty bucks. He wasn't even desperate for the rare thrill of having her tell him that not only was he right, but she was also wrong. 

It'd happen eventually. He could wait.

****

"So how was the date?" Natasha asked, sliding over to make room for Clint in the bed. "Also, you'd better have brushed your teeth. Morning breath is inevitable, but I draw the line at morning vindaloo breath."

"I come over with my hair still wet from the shower, and you think you need to remind me to brush my teeth?" He'd cleaned up after he and Scott got back home; they'd gone to Clint's favorite dive bar after dinner--because it seemed like he was taking Scott to all his favorite _everything_ \--and even though smoking technically wasn't allowed, there were always a lot of people in the bar who didn't get the memo. A shower had definitely been in order; then he'd put on sleep pants, a T-shirt, and a pair of slip-on shoes to make the trip down two floors to Natasha's room. 

He sometimes suspected that the relative location of their living quarters had been intentional when Tony built the tower for them, because Tony could be a jerk like that. He'd have your back if you needed him--give you the shirt off _his_ back if you needed that (though realistically instead of metaphorically, he'd just buy you a dozen shirts of your own)--but he'd also have zero problem with doing some minor cockblocking just because he thought it was funny. 

The only thing keeping Clint from being convinced of that particular theory was the knowledge that if Tony had noticed that Clint and Natasha were a couple, he'd never have stopped giving Clint crap about it. Even if that would open him up to all the commentary Clint had so far held back from making about Tony's cluelessness where someone tall, blond, and a hundred years old was concerned. 

Natasha's silence was probably the only answer he was going to get about the toothbrushing, though. "Yeah," he said finally. "I brushed my teeth." He climbed into the bed next to her, kissing her softly. "Minty fresh, see?"

She shook her head. "Goofball," she said, and kissed him again. "But you didn't answer my question. How was your date? Or your totally-not-date for which you put on a new shirt. You didn't even wear a new shirt the last time we went out for dinner."

"No, I wore a shirt that I look hot in. I didn't look hot in what I wore tonight, at least no more than I do no matter what I'm wearing." The shirt he'd worn tonight was fine, but nothing special. It was just a plain button-down shirt. It wasn't even purple.

Okay, the gray might, in the proper light, have some slight lilac notes to it, but it wasn't purple. 

The shirt was intended for undercover work; he liked to wear stuff for a while before using it on an op, because too many brand-new clothes raised red flags with the congenitally suspicious. 

He hadn't even made an effort tonight, just put the shirt on with a pair of jeans, then rolled the sleeves halfway up his forearms. 

("Who even are you?" Scott had said when Clint met him in the front lobby. "I'm waiting for a weirdo in purple. Have you seen him?")

"Whatever you say," Natasha said. "So, did you have a good time?" 

"It was all right," he said. "Scott wouldn't even taste my vindaloo; he's scared of, and I quote, 'scorching off his taste buds.' But he did like the rogan josh he ordered. I'd have brought home leftovers for you, but you know how safe leftovers are in this place." 

Food in the communal kitchen, no matter how carefully labeled, got devoured by either Hulk or Thor. Clint kept saying he was going to get a mini-fridge for his room to keep his takeout boxes safe, but he hadn't gotten around to it. Usually, he brought the food home anyway, because at least it wouldn't go to waste, but nobody, absolutely _nobody_ , wanted to be around Hulk after he ate leftover vindaloo. Not even Hulk, although that never stopped him from eating it. 

"I'll just come with you next time. That is, if I won't be a fifth wheel," she said, smirking at him. 

"We were pretty boring," Clint said. "We ate. We talked about tech." Clint wasn't an expert like Scott, Sam, or Tony, but designing his own specialized arrows meant he could hold his own in conversation. "We talked about movies. We talked about gaming." They'd discovered they had a lot in common. Clint had been right; Scott was definitely someone he could enjoy just hanging out with. 

"Then I'd make things more interesting." 

"You always do. And sure, come along next time. Then maybe you'll agree that I won the bet." Besides, maybe it would prod Scott into saying something to Natasha if he could see that Clint really wouldn't mind. 

"You're dating Scott," she said. "How is that not the exact opposite of winning our bet?"

"We're not dating!" Clint protested. "If we were dating, then this would have been our third date." If you didn't count the times they'd managed to claim the game system while Thor and Hulk were both out of the tower, or the times they'd hung out together working on those new arrows. 

"I already know you can count to three, so what's your point?" 

"We're not twelve. By the third date, we'd have at least kissed."

Not only hadn't there been any kissing, but Clint hadn't even thought about kissing Scott. He'd been very definite about that. There'd been plenty of times tonight, for example, that he'd thought, "I totally don't want to kiss Scott right now."

It was always unnerving when Natasha giggled like that.

****

"Aw, come on," Clint yelled. "That one was mine!"

It was robots today, because it was Wednesday. Clint suspected that invading hordes had a strict schedule for attacking Manhattan. On Mondays, it was sorcerers, wizards, and other magical creeps. On Tuesdays, things with tentacles. Wednesdays were for robots. 

That particular robot had been his robot, though, and Scott had gotten in his damn way. If Clint's reflexes had been any slower, he'd have shot Scott with an EMP arrow; instead, he'd jerked his bow aside at the last second. He'd hit a different robot, but that wasn't the point. That specific robot had been his. He'd called it. 

Clint wasn't sure if an EMP arrow would do anything too serious to Scott. It'd leave a bruise, obviously, and there'd potentially be soft-tissue damage at the point of contact. The pulse itself wouldn't harm a person unless they had a pacemaker or something, but it'd screw up any electronics Scott had on him, and Clint didn't know enough to say whether or not the Ant-Man suit would be affected, or how the pulse would interact with Pym particles. 

But that wasn't the point. Clint didn't accidentally hit his teammates, or even almost accidentally hit them: that was the point. 

And an even bigger point was that he had still called that robot. 

"You're welcome for saving your life," Scott yelled back. 

Clint rolled his eyes. "It wasn't even a _big_ robot. I'd have been fine." 

"Okay, that was the last one," Cap called, drowning out whatever Scott would have said in response. "SHIELD's on their way for cleanup. Good work, team." 

"Yeah, good work," Clint muttered, just loudly enough that he was sure Scott would hear it, "except for the guy who got in my way after _I called it._ " 

As the team finished up what they were doing and gathered around, it was decided that Steve and Natasha were both staying behind to talk to whoever SHIELD sent to deal with the leftovers. Thor and Hulk were bickering about which of them had wiped out more of the little robots. Tony was going to collect whatever spare parts he could before SHIELD arrived and started confiscating all the interesting tech, and he'd roped Sam into helping. 

To Clint's surprise, Scott didn't volunteer to join them. "I'm going to head back, if that's okay?" he said, and Cap nodded. 

If Clint went back to the tower with Scott, they could keep arguing about the robot until Scott finally saw reason and admitted Clint was right. 

It looked like Scott had the same basic idea. "I didn't get in your way," he grumbled as he fell in next to Clint for the walk back to the tower. "I was about to shrink! Your arrow would have gone right past me." 

"Yeah, right. Just for that, you're buying the pizza." 

"What pizza?" 

"The pizza you owe me because I had dibs on that robot." He grinned at Scott. "No olives, no anchovies, and we're going to have to eat it in your room because otherwise chances are way too good that somebody's going to come back and steal it all." 

"My room? What about yours?"

"Did anyone tell you there's no maid service in the tower? It's a security thing. There are bots to do the heavy cleaning, but the rest is on us."

"Not in so many words," Scott said as they waited on a corner for the light to change. "But from the speech I got from Cap about the chore rotation, I kind of figured." 

"Did he mention how much I hate cleaning?" 

Scott shook his head, laughing. "God, you're a child."

"I beg your pardon," he said. "I'm a man-child. Emphasis on the _man_." He accompanied the words with a flex of his very manly biceps.

"Man-child, then," Scott said. "Pick up after yourself." 

"Some of us don't have an army of ants to do our bidding."

"It is pretty sweet, isn't it?" 

Scott didn't offer to lend Clint an army of ants to temporarily do his bidding. He did pull out his phone and order pizza, though, so that was kind of okay. 

Not okay enough for him to forgive Scott for getting in his way, but still pretty good.

****

Scott's room had a temporary feel to it, like it was just a hotel room. It was probably just because he kept all his personal stuff shrunk down, Clint told himself, and not because Scott wasn't planning to be here very long.

There wasn't a couch, just the bed and a lot of empty space, so Clint dropped onto the bed, sprawling on his back, and then winced. "Man, you have got to get Tony to upgrade your mattress. Is he mad at you? Is that why he's making you sleep on a bag of rocks?"

Scott shrugged. "I just moved my old stuff here from my apartment."

"Oh, no, that's not going to work. Shrink that down and store it if you want, but take advantage of the rich guy paying the bills and at least get a bed that won't kill your back. Maybe even buy a couch and a table? I mean, I can tell you right now that if this is the only seating option, you might not be seeing all that much of me."

Scott set the pizza boxes down on the bed; the delivery guy had turned up at the tower right about the same time Clint and Scott had, so they'd carried the pizza up with them. "Since when did you want to see all that much of me?"

Then he frowned. "God, tell me you're not planning to come here and keep trying to convince me to ask Natasha out. That was way too weird. I've got no problem with open relationships, but you trying to set me up with your girlfriend? I've got to tell you, that's a little much." 

Clint opened one of the boxes. Ugh, olives. He shoved that one aside and opened the other box, grabbing a slice of pizza and taking a huge bite. "Yeah," he said through a mouthful of pepperoni-and-onion, "it's weird. But she started it." 

"Really? Who'd she try to set you up with? I didn't even think you knew any other women."

"I know women!" True, a lot of them were villains, and most of the rest were SHIELD operatives. For some reason, the women of SHIELD were immune to his charms. It was probably the way Natasha wrote mission reports. 

"Name six who haven't tried to kill you in the past twelve months." 

"Sam's mom?" Technically, he could claim a lot of villains in that category, too, because most of them just tried to incapacitate him, not kill him. "Besides, she wasn't trying to set me up with a woman." 

"Oh." Scott didn't sound freaked out by that, just mildly curious, and then... " _Oh_." He looked at the pizza boxes, then down at the blanket, then anywhere but at Clint. 

"Yeah. Um. Crap." He hadn't intended for Scott to realize who Natasha had been throwing him at. On the other hand, this could be an easy way to win that twenty bucks from her. 

"I guess that answers one question I've had for a while now," Scott said, still looking at every non-Clint thing in the room. 

"Straight men _absolutely_ wear tight purple muscle shirts," Clint said huffily--not that Clint was at all straight, but it was the principle of the thing--"and it's a hurtful stereotype to say otherwise. I mean, aside from the color, have you seen what Cap wears to the gym?"

After a few seconds of pregnant silence, he said, "...you know what, forget I said that. It's irrelevant in so many ways."

It did get Scott to look in his direction again, though, so that was a win.

"You're the only person I've ever met who owns that many purple shirts. I don't think it's a straight versus non-straight thing. I think it's a 'Hawkeye might be a little too committed to his branding' thing." 

"I just like purple."

"Anyway," Scott went on, "that wasn't the question I had. The question was, 'Is Trickshot flirting with me or not?'"

"Maybe I was, a little," Clint admitted. 

"And also possibly a more recent question: 'Is Clint aware that he's still flirting with me now?' Because you've definitely been flirting, but I couldn't tell if it was on purpose or not."

"Maybe it was, a little," he said again. "Or more than a little." 

It wasn't a big deal. He should probably tell Scott not to read too much into it. There wasn't any chemistry--no sparks or fireworks or indescribable zing between them--so it didn't matter if they were flirting. 

"So this is what, our fourth date now?" Scott set his half-eaten slice of pizza back in the box to tick things off on his fingers. "We went out for pizza, then burgers, then Indian and that terrible bar, and now pizza again because we're already in a rut. In fact, if you count hanging out around the tower, I think this could be as much as our seventh date."

"None of those were dates," Clint said. 

Scott frowned at him. It made his forehead wrinkle up. 

Clint had never, at least not while completely sober, found himself that entranced by the frown lines on someone's forehead. 

Aw, crush, _no_.

Not just because it would mean that Natasha would insist that she'd won their bet, but because it wasn't actually a crush. It was just outside influences telling him he ought to have a crush on Scott, because Scott was good-looking and fun to be around and apparently hadn't been asking about Clint and Natasha because he was interested in _Natasha_. 

But Clint didn't get butterflies around Scott. His palms weren't sweaty. His heart wasn't beating any faster than usual. 

He just felt good. Happy to be here, in Scott's room, eating pizza with him. Add a movie or an episode of _Animal Cops_ , and it'd be a great evening. The only other person Clint felt this comfortable around was Natasha.

"I'm pretty sure they were dates," Scott was saying. "I mean, you knew you were flirting with me and I knew I wanted you to be, so... yeah. Fourth date, minimum, and you haven't even kissed me yet."

"Maybe I'm not that kind of boy," Clint said. 

"Maybe if that's not just crap, you should tell me pretty soon, because otherwise, I'm going to fix that little oversight."

"It's just crap." Kissing Scott sounded like a brilliant idea. If he kissed Scott and nothing came of it, then Natasha would definitely have to admit that she was wrong. Not to mention that whatever weird incipient pseudo-crush had made him start finding Scott's goofy facial expressions endearing would be utterly destroyed by a terrible first kiss. 

And it was going to be a terrible first kiss, he knew. No chemistry. No spark. No--

Scott kissed him. It kind of felt like Scott was doing his best to give Clint a good, old-fashioned, "My mom's driving us to the movies, and I promise I'll have him home by ten," kind of first kiss: it was sweet and soft and didn't ask anything more from Clint but that he kiss back in just the same way. 

He didn't hear the Hallelujah chorus. (He'd be prepared to swear up and down that he'd heard it the first time he and Natasha kissed, but he'd also had a minor head injury and enough aquavit in his system to fell a moose.)

There weren't any songbirds chirping in the trees, and not just because the closest you were going to get to a tree in the tower was the coat rack in Cap's room. 

There were no fireworks, either, unless you counted the bolt of lightning outside that was Thor's version of, "Hi, everybody, I'm home!" 

But it felt like something clicked deep inside his brain, fitting the two of them together. Maybe it was different than the way Clint had felt when he and Natasha had gotten together, or when he and Princess Python used to flirt, but it was a feeling he thought he'd like having again. 

"Going to stop trying to hook me up with Natasha?" Scott asked when he pulled back. 

"Maybe. Though my birthday's coming up." And now he was trying not to picture his two favorite redheads, one on either side of him in an improved version of this bed. Then, because Scott wasn't the only one who could ask questions, he said, "Gonna make me stop doing all the work planning dates?"

"So much work," Scott said, kissing him again. This time he nibbled gently at Clint's lower lip, which was totally unfair because how the heck did Scott know that was one of Clint's weaknesses? "We got hamburgers. It's not like you planned a hot-air balloon ride followed by a night of ballroom dancing." 

Clint's eyes narrowed. "Do not plan a night of ballroom dancing." The balloon might be fun, though. 

"A night of making fun of ballroom dancing championships on TV?"

"If there's nothing better to do." 

"I have two left feet, anyway," Scott said. "How about we do something staggeringly original and go to a movie?" Then he gave Clint a dramatic wink. "We can sit in the back row and make out like a couple of teenagers." 

Clint could just picture Steve's disappointed face when they showed up on Twitter, photographed making out at the movies. "You have that helmet when we're assembled, but I might be kind of recognizable?"

Or maybe not. It wasn't like he didn't get overlooked a lot, but he didn't want to say so to Scott. 

"Wear that gray shirt again and leave your glasses behind. No one will have any idea it's you."

"I like the way you think." If the shirt had been chosen for undercover ops, then obviously wearing it would help him blend in with the crowd. 

"And be sure to roll up the sleeves."

"How is that going to make me any less recognizable?"

"It won't. I just like looking at your arms." 

There was nothing Clint could do in response to that but kiss Scott again, and again, and then completely forget about the pizza getting cold at the foot of the bed, because apparently kissing Scott was going to be one of Clint's new favorite things. 

It might even be good enough to make up for how smug Natasha was going to be at him. 

Nothing was _actually_ that good, of course, but he had a feeling Scott would come pretty close.

****

**Author's Note:**

> Title from AJR's "Turning Out." 
> 
> You can find me [on Dreamwidth](https://mireille719.dreamwidth.org).


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